Strange issue with my laptop

[Moed]

I have an older Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop that's worked perfectly since I got it several years ago. Lately however, a strange "bug" has been manifesting itself.

Every once in a while, whenever I start the system, I get an error message saying that the amount of system memory has changed and I need to hit F1 to shut down. After I do that and restart, I hit F2 to go to the BIOS and the amount of system memory displayed is correct?? I then exit BIOS and go into the OS and everything is back to normal.

Now I've seen problems like this before in desktops and I've corrected them by replacing the CMOS battery (and other ways). But I'm not familiar on what causes this and what to do about it on laptops.

System specs:

P4 2.2ghz
40gb HD
768mb RAM
WinXP Pro SP3

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[glc]

Have you run diagnostics? With a Dell, you press F12 on startup, or boot with the Resource CD.

[Moed]

Thanks, I'll give that a try.